The Huguenot Emigration to America

THESE volumes ¹ are the first installment of a work which will be a most valuable addition to our historical literature. The subject well deserves the treatment that Dr. Baird is giving to it, and the task is one of extreme difficulty. It seems indeed almost impossible to write the history of a people dispersed all over the New World, and long since absorbed by the populations among which they took refuge. A connected and logical account of the Huguenots after their departure from France is of course out of the question, for the narrative is necessarily made up of episodes. The emigration from France went on, with many fluctuations, but still without a break, for over a century ; and when the great flight came, after the Revocation, the history of the exiles is resolved into that of little bands settling here and there, of families, and even to a large extent of individuals.

Dr. Baird’s first volume brings together accounts of all the settlements attempted by the Huguenots during the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth century, while the Protestants of France still formed a powerful political party in their native land. The efforts which were made by them to plant colones on the coast of North America have been elaborately told elsewhere. The abortive settlements of Ribaut and Laudonniere in Florida and South Carolina, those of De Caen and De Monts in Canada and Acadia, and the romantic struggle between D’Anlnay and De la Tour are all familiar to the students of American history. Much less familiar, however, are the ill-fated Brazil settlement and the more fortunate colonists who became firmly established in the Antilles, whence they escaped to the continent, when persecution waxed hot. All these various expeditions are now brought together by Dr. Baird, and form, as they ought, connected parts of the same history. With the narrative of these direct attempts is also joined an account of those Huguenots who, fleeing first to Holland, went thence to the New World : some with the Walloons to New Netherlands, others with the Pilgrims to New England. There were many in the former case, and but few in the latter; yet their presence at Plymouth is unmistakable, and shows better than anything else how the blood of the French Huguenots entered everywhere and from the earliest times into the Anglo-American stocks. In that age religion overcame race and language. Priscilla Mullins, famed in song and story, beloved of Standish and the bride of John Alden, was a Huguenot, her father’s name being William Molines. So too was Philip De la Noye, who came over in the Fortune in 1621, and from whom, or from whose kindred of like name, are descended all the numerous persons named Delano and Noyes.

Dr. Baird’s second volume treats of the persecution and consequent emigration in the various provinces of France, and then takes up the settlements of the Huguenots in the United States. Those of New England are completed, and the others of the Middle and Southern States are to be given in succeeding volumes. Dr. Baird apologizes in his preface for printing so many lists of names ; but the apology is needless, for the names of the Huguenot refugees are of the very essence of his subject. Indeed, the only fault we have to find with Dr. Baird is that he has not gone quite far enough in this direction, and enabled us to detect in all cases the Huguenot descents under the curious changes which the names have suffered among an Englishspeaking people. The corruptions of French names have been in many instances so strange and so complete that only a thorough examination by a master of the subject like Dr. Baird would reveal them. For example, the seemingly characteristic Yankee name of Bunker is, we believe, derived from Boncceur, and Doolittle from De L’Hotel, while tradition has it that the two Cape Anne families of Blumpy and Whitefoot are alike descended from Huguenot brothers named Blancpied.

Dr. Baird deserves the highest praise for the excellence of his work, much of it involving the most minute and laborious research. He has shown himself industrious and painstaking in the highest degree, and his simple, modest style harmonizes entirely with his topics, and makes much that would otherwise be dry very pleasant and agreeable reading. The work as a whole, although of necessity filled with so many personal and apparently trifling details, is in reality a most important chapter in the history of events which ultimately shook France to its foundations and affected most deeply the civilized world. The history of the persecution and exile of the Huguenots, and of their dispersion and absorption among other races, is only a part of a much greater theme. There are two divisions of the subject. The results of the emigration to the Huguenots themselves and to the people who received them form one ; the effect of their departure upon France is the other.

The study of the Huguenots in America brings out strongly their value as a people. It would be difficult, indeed, to find an emigration of a finer type. Devoted to principle, sturdy in morals, frugal, industrious, and enterprising, the Huguenots closely resembled their English brethren who had sought the New World for conscience’ sake. But the austerity of the Puritan was much softened in the Huguenot, whose natural light-heartedness made him more agreeable than the dissenter of English race, even if he was not quite such a stubborn fighter and restless adventurer. It seems very probable that much of the American vivacity and quickness is due to the early and widespread infusion of Huguenot blood. But however this may be, a mere glance at Dr. Baird’s lists, where we find the names of Faneuil, Jay, Bayard, De Lancy, Maury, Laurens, Marion, and a host of others familiar in our history, shows how much we owe the French Huguenots in a thousand ways. So far as can now be learned, they brought only good gifts to the American colonies, and they assimilated at once and most thoroughly with the people among whom they had been thrown.

The other side of the picture is far more impressive. In proportion as the coming of the Huguenots enriched and benefited the countries of their adoption, their going brought evil to the land which they were forced to leave. It passes belief, almost, that the policy adopted by church and state in France could ever have been really carried out by reasoning beings. The mind recoils from the bare idea of the imbecility and cruelty displayed by the successors of Henry of Navarre toward the men who placed him on the throne. The French kings proved, indeed, that persecution could be perfectly successful in suppressing religious opinions, but this was their sole success. After years of bloody fighting the Edict of Nantes had brought rest and quiet to the Huguenots, then as always loyal and law-abiding citizens. Under Richelieu and Louis XIII., the old system was revived, and the political strength of the Huguenots was broken. Then came another breathing space, and then Louis XIV. set about the work of extirpation. The horrors of the dragonnades were at last crowned by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the Huguenots fled by the thousand from their native land. There is no more dreadful story in modern history, and the work was done by one of the most vicious and contemptible charlatans who ever disgraced a throne. We are filled with hot indignation even now if we stop to think who and what these people were whom this king of shreds and patches, of big wigs and high heels, drove forth from their country. They were the very flower of the French race. They were the merchants and mariners, the skilled artisans and successful farmers, the manufacturers and mechanics, who made the prosperity of France. They were the God-fearing, industrious, intelligent middle class, who form the bone and sinew of every community. These were the men who were forced to flee like criminals in the night from the hideous persecution which beset their homes. They were excluded and expelled even from the colonial settlements of France. There was no resting-place for them except among strangers, and to foreign lands they went. They carried with them thrift, industry, and morality. Wherever they settled they succeeded, and they always won respect and honor and wealth for themselves, and conferred fresh prosperity upon their adopted countries. The Protestant heresy, however, was trampled out wherever Louis XIV. held sway, and for this glorious victory a heavy price has since been paid.

The Huguenots were shut out from the French colonies, and within a hundred years the whole French colonial system, supported by an admixture of Jesuits and muskets, went down with one great crash. In the name of God, dragoons were let loose upon an unoffending people, who were harried and hunted from their homes ; and there is to-day more irreligion, or lack of religion, in France than in any Christian country. The disturbing element of a great middle class, who thought for themselves and worshiped God in their own way, was torn up by the roots. King and priest rubbed their hands and gloated over the comely uniformity they had produced. A little more than a century slipped away, and the descendant of Louis XIV. was brought to the block by a nation which had ceased to be uniform in various matters, religion included. The great conservative force of French society was in the Huguenots. It was carefully destroyed, and when the hour of trial came there was nothing between the aristocracy and the populace. Peasant and workingman degraded by centuries of oppression were

on the one side, king and courtiers on the other. Thus widely separated classes came together in deadly battle, and the havoc began. There was nothing to soften the shock, nothing to ballast the reeling ship of state. The bloodshed of the French Revolution is hideous to think of, but it was the direct outcome of the policy of the Revocation. Read the story of the dragonnades and of the expulsion of the Huguenots, and the Terror then seems only very imperfect justice. There is here one of the most awful lessons in all history. Nations which permit a bedizened little sultan like Louis XIV. to indulge in dragonnades and in the exile and torture of the best of his subjects are pretty sure to pay for it sooner or later by noyades and fusillades and by a great deal of bloodletting. Very few races have ever suffered more for conscience’ sake than did the French Huguenots. There is not one whose wrongs have been so amply and so justly revenged.